47-53, Elm Drive, Hove

Image: © Simon Carey Taken: 5 Jan 2017

The two pairs of semi-detached houses on the left were built in the 1930s and occupy the site of Gibbets Farm. Originally a barn where two labourers Edward Howell and James Rooke hid in 1792 to share the proceeds of the letters they had just robbed from a mail boy on the Old Shoreham Road in nearby Goldstone Bottom, now Hove Park. Both were soon identified, arrested and put on trail in Horsham where they were found guilty and sentenced to hang. Their bodies were gibbeted overlooking the scene of their crime where Rooke's mother would often be found waiting for the bones to drop so she could collect and give the body a proper burial. Tennyson's peom 'Rizpah' is alleged to have been based on the story. Subsequently, the barn became known as Gibbets Barn which sometime in the mid 19th century had two cottages built next to it. One of the last tenants, Samuel Holmes, converted them into a single dwelling becoming the farmhouse of Gibbets Farm. The farm operated until 1930 when the land was sold for housing and subsequently demolished to make way for the houses in Elm Drive. See Barns, Gibbet Farm (Date unknown) - http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume37/source/jg_37_107.html Farmhouse, Gibbets Farm (1912) - http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume37/source/jg_37_109.html

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